MarkWhittington writes: "The idea of minting a $1 trillion dollar coin and depositing it in the federal reserve has caused a great deal of comment, being endorsed by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman and opposed in the Republican run House. But what if instead of this scheme the government were to mint a series of commemorative coins made from space mined platinum and then auction them off to wealthy collectors to help pay the federal deficit? Such coins would almost certainly have more intrinsic value than the price of the metal. The trick, of course, is getting at the resource."

And that's if you confiscated their entire wealth, which is mostly investments: stocks, bonds. A piddling amount of land, jewelry, yachts, cars. It's not cash until you sell it, and who could buy it now that you've confiscated the rich people's wealth?

Let's assume we can get to (some space place with platinum) and back for $1 billion - about double the cost of a shuttle launch.

To make money at it, you'd need to bring back at least 20,000 kg of platinum, given the current approximate spot prices.

20 tons is a lot - and that's to break even. To make money, you either have to sell the materials for far more than spot price, or bring back a lot more than 20 tons on your initial gigabuck of expenses.